A rural municipality, often abbreviated RM, is a form of municipality in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, perhaps best comparable to counties or townships in the western United States. Unlike most counties in the United States or Canada, rural municipalities specifically exclude designated official cities, towns, villages, and First Nations Indian reserves from their territory. They are essentially the rural portion of what would normally be a county. In this way, they could perhaps best be compared to certain counties in the state of Virginia that have independent cities excluded from their territory, although, in Virginia there is usually only one independent city per county, whereas there can be many officially excluded communities in the geographical territory of rural municipalities.

History

The Municipal Ordinance of 1883 was enacted by the North-West Territories to provide services to a rural area and provide some means of municipal governing. Saskatchewan and Alberta became provinces in 1905. North West Territorial Government issues Statute Labour Ordinance (1897) and sets of Fire Districts, Statute Labour and Fire (SLF) Districts or Statute Labour Districts. Community residents could pay taxes or supply a couple days per quarter section labour constructing roads, bridges, fireguards instead of paying taxes. The prairie fire in the 19th century were devastating affairs. Fire districts were later called Local Improvement Districts which themselves were reformed into Rural Municipalities.

A municipality (Estonian: omavalitsus, plural omavalitsused) is the smallest administrative subdivision of Estonia. Each municipality is a unit of self-government with its representative and executive bodies. The municipalities in Estonia cover the entire territory of the country.

Municipalities in Estonia are of two types: urban municipalities or towns (linnad, singular linn) and rural municipalities or parishes (vallad, singular vald). There is no other status distinction between them.

Municipality may contain one or several populated places. Some urban municipalities are divided into districts (linnaosad, singular linnaosa) with limited self-government, e.g. Tallinn consists of 8 districts (Haabersti, Kesklinn, Kristiine, Lasnamäe, Mustamäe, Nõmme, Pirita, Põhja-Tallinn).

Municipalities range in population from Tallinn with 427,500 inhabitants to Ruhnu with 68. As over two-thirds of the municipalities have a population of under 3,000, many of them have found it advantageous to co-operate in providing services and carrying out administrative functions.

A rural council or officially, village council (Ukrainian: сільська́ ра́́да, silska rada), often shortened to (Ukrainian: сільра́́да, silrada) is a local government area that is associated with rural populated places in Ukraine. These populated places can refer to either villages (Ukrainian: село, selo) or rural settlements (Ukrainian: селище, selysche).

Their status was defined by a 1997 Verkhovna Rada law "On the Local Self-Government of Ukraine."

In 2015, there was a total of 10,279 rural councils.

See also

References